China has played a key role in the development and mining of coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. Even cryptotrading in China has become a force to be reckoned with. In the past month, three Chinese exchanges — Bitfinex, OkCoin, and BTCC — made up over 45% of the global market as reported by Bitcoinity.org.

The Chinese government is notorious for its protective regulation, and it may have started seeing crypto currencies as a threat to the national currency, particularly due to fact that Chinese investors bought up bitcoin and bet against the yuan last year.

Similar events took place in Venezuela, where the government took a hostile attitude towards cryptocurrency after hyperinflation pushed many people to secure their assets in Bitcoin

The Chinese Central Bank last week criticized ICOs for threatening the country’s financial order. As a result, ICOs were banned as an unapproved and illegal form of public financing. Similarly, WSJ sources claim that Bitcoin exchanges bring “too much disorder”.

Mixed messages

Although no details on the timeframe were specified, and different regulators both gave contradictory messages on whether it would happen or not, Bitcoin has already dropped to a low of $4,108, according to CoinDesk.

The contradictory rumours have made many sceptical about the veracity of this information. Bobby Lee, co-founder and CEO of BTCC, tweeted a poll asking whether followers thought the shutdown news was fake or real. Of his respondents 83% did not believe that it will happen.

OkCoin stated the following: “‘Until now we haven’t been informed by any authorities about closing BTC exchanges, if that happens we will show notifications on our website immediately. Even if that’s the case, we would be running offline trading for users, and the balance of coins in your account will be absolutely safe.”